There’s Not a Word Yet for Old Friends Who’ve Just Met

Three years ago today was a momentous Friday. I got to hug one of my best friends for the first time.

I met GG when I joined a Narnia forum in August 2009. I thought she was awesome basically from the moment I encountered her. I mean, her username was Gondorgirl! She was also, interestingly, the first person on the forum to address me directly: she told me she liked my username.

We first bonded planning a duel over Faramir in the Road Trip to Middle Earth (or something like that…) thread.

By the time I’d known GG for a year or so, I had decided that she was one of my very favorite people. But I kind of tried to talk myself out of it for a long time. She was a fantastic person who had all these fantastic people in her real life. We hadn’t known each other very long. She didn’t even know my real name. How on earth could I manage to be one of her favorite people?

But one glorious day – out of the blue, it seemed, though maybe it wasn’t – she told me I was. I still can’t figure out how that happened. But I’m tremendously thankful for it.

Shortly after I went away to college, we somehow figured out that all that time we’d been living about an hour away from each other. It was wonderful timing (feel the sarcasm). But I hadn’t gone far away to college, so it didn’t make for an impossible trip. And this very quickly led to GG deciding to come visit.

So she did. The first thought I remember having upon seeing her was, “Oh, she’s not as tall as I expected. That’s nice.”

We only got to be together a few hours. We hugged. We walked around and saw more of the two buildings of my college than I had seen in the two months I’d been there. We took some pictures. I taught her how to play Phase 10.

They were a slightly awkward few hours. But so worth it.

It’s been a lovely three years of getting to sometimes see each other in person. And a lovely five-ish years of being friends. And hopefully this is just the beginning.